


come and be human with me

by flybbfly



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Break Up, Enjolras Is Bad At Feelings, Grantaire is purposely obtuse, Happy Ending, M/M, Misunderstandings, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 03:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5031832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybbfly/pseuds/flybbfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Grantaire has named his radiator after a certain blond revolutionary and Courfeyrac is throwing a Halloween party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	come and be human with me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [torakowalski](https://archiveofourown.org/users/torakowalski/gifts).



Enjolras is radiating warmth, and Grantaire can't get him to shut off.

“I don't know what's wrong with it,” Grantaire babbles to his landlord over the phone. “It's not fucking working—it's eighty degrees outside, I need it turned off.”

“It's not up to me to fix it,” his landlord says. “It's a heatwave. I can't control the weather.”

“There's nothing you can do about it?” Grantaire asks, glaring at his radiator. “It's seriously going to give me heat stroke.”

“I'll have someone in to look at it tonight,” his landlord says, which Grantaire knows means any time within the next two weeks, if at all.

He really, really needs to look into a non-illegal apartment, but living in the basement of this building is dirt cheap and he can't really afford much more.

Instead of doing something normal, like going outside, maybe, or finding a friend to bunk with, or even going to a movie—movie theaters are air conditioned, he's pretty sure, even though he hasn't been to one in years and isn't even sure if they're still a thing people go to—instead of doing something normal, Grantaire opens a new bottle of bad whiskey, bottom shelf, decidedly un-Scottish, and settles into his grimy sofa with a sketchbook.

He hasn't painted anything in months, but he's been sketching nearly nonstop, things that shouldn't be etched in charcoal but that he draws anyway: sunsets, the ocean, the French flag, flames, even one laughable drawing of Joan of Arc that he mostly did as a joke thinking of non-radiator Enjolras and that he now sort of wants to burn. There is nothing, he thinks, turning a new page and starting a doodle of the buildings beyond his rooftop, more miserable than a sunset done in black and white.

He thinks about drawing the end of the world. He's not really sure what he expects—if it's going to be of-Biblical-proportions, if they're going to have to deal with God's justice and embers raining from the sky or whatever. Maybe the world will just vanish. Maybe a sonic boom will wipe out all the life, leaving boiling oceans and burning deserts …

Grantaire sighs. It's been three months and two days since he saw actual-real-human-being Enjolras and not just radiator-Enjolras. It's been three months and one day since he last painted something in color. It's been three months full stop since he sold a painting, and his bank account is running dangerously low.

 *

It took them months to say “I love you.”

It's not that Grantaire didn't know it, or, okay, it is—he never got it, never realized that Enjolras was really, really with him and not just—

It's just that Enjolras is a fighter, the type of soul that thrives on revolution in its purest form, which is violence in reaction to violence. Enjolras will swear for a thousand years that revolution is not necessarily reactionary, but he will say it with that look in his eye, that tiny sliver of coldness he gets when he talks about the greater good.

Enjolras is nothing if not utilitarian. Oh, not Benthamite utilitarianism in its purest, most conservative form—he would not, for instance, kill a billion people to save the other six billion, would not weigh human lives against each other—but sometimes he believes, or forces himself to believe, in the theoretical ethical rightness of some acts which he thinks will benefit everyone in the long run even if—at their core—they seem morally abhorrent.

He advocates violent revolution, and he not only advocates it, he devotes his life to it. He spends his days at a human rights think tank and his nights using the information stolen from the think tank's archives to attack companies from the inside out. He spends weeks planning new attacks, from cyber to whistle-blowing. He is nothing if not thought out, logical to the extreme, it follows this from that and if so x ergo revolution. To see him speak is to look upon the sun; to hear him preach is to worship at the altar of a god.

Grantaire sometimes imagines that this, he, is like an apostle to the prophet. He tries to compare himself, Luke or John, but he knows: he is either Simon the Zealot, or Judas who failed. It's a contradiction, he knows: devotion coupled with betrayal. Piety with disdain.

That's why, perhaps, it took them months to say “I love you,” but it took them longer to get together at all.

It wasn't logical. Nothing about it made sense. Enjolras hated Grantaire. Grantaire sort of hated Enjolras, too, wasn't good enough for him, was so fucking _irritated_ by him that it was shocking to everyone involved when Enjolras, breathing hard after having shouted at Grantaire to stop coming to meetings drunk and having then shoved him into the Musain's back room ostensibly to yell at him more—“Or, better yet, if you aren't going to contribute anything—”

“Stop coming at all?” Grantaire said, and Enjolras, blazing crimson, seized him by the front of his shirt and kissed him.

They didn't fuck, not that time: first Enjolras backed away, breathing hard, cheeks bright pink the way they got when he was frustrated or, Grantaire was learning, particularly turned on.

“Shut up,” Enjolras said.

“I wasn't saying anything.”

“I'm sorry.”

“What?”

“I didn't—Courfeyrac keeps telling me I should just—but it was a stupid—”

Grantaire had never seen Enjolras—he of the beautiful speeches and impromptu sermons—tongue-tied before. Grantaire watched him in mild bemusement, craving a cigarette or a drink. Both were handy, but it didn't seem particularly smart to go for either just now.

“Enjolras—”

Enjolras fled.

 *

Radiator-Enjolras rattles loudly in the corner, still pumping too much heat into the room, and then there's a long silence for a while, and then the temperature drops noticeably.

Grantaire rolls over, looks at the broken radiator.

“Are you ready to function properly now?” he says aloud, and then wonders when he started talking to inanimate objects.

The sky outside is the dull orange-grey of early morning. His head throbs. Grantaire reaches for the glass on his nightstand and finds it empty—no water, no whiskey, no coffee.

He supposes that he has to go grocery shopping.

For Grantaire, grocery shopping these days mostly consists of what he can afford: eggs, bread, cheese, whiskey, cigarettes. He's almost at the self-checkout when someone calls his name.

“Grantaire!” Courfeyrac says again.

He's sitting inside of a cart positively overloaded with bottles of spirits and beers and snack foods, and Grantaire remembers embarrassingly late the Facebook invite that he ignored.

“Are you coming this weekend?”

Grantaire shrugs, runs a hand through his hair. “I kind of have plans.”

“Bring them,” Courfeyrac says, winking.

“I don't know,” Grantaire says.

“No, you have to come,” Courfeyrac says. He sits up straighter. “Seriously. We haven't seen you in months. We _miss_ you, R.”

He's looking at Grantaire with that look he gets, that “I'm going to fix this look,” that Courfeyrac look. It makes Grantaire ache—what right does Courfeyrac have, Grantaire thinks, to be so lovely and sweet and make Grantaire _miss_ him?

Grantaire misses everyone, misses all his friends, misses sitting in meetings and sketching them—but Enjolras got the ABC in the breakup. That's how it works. That's how it was always going to work, he supposes. He should've thought of it before he let Enjolras push him up against the wall in the Musain's back room and jerk him off while all their friends made laughing conversation on the other side of the door.

“Anyway,” Courfeyrac continues, deliberately oblivious to Grantaire's discomfort. “None of us even know what _happened_ —we just know you were there and then you weren't, and I'm not saying it's a dick move for you to ignore all your friends after something horrible happens because we all deal with pain in different ways, but I _am_ saying it's a dick move to continue to ignore them for weeks after.”

“I think Enjolras is a dick,” Grantaire says, suddenly savage. “I'll see you around, Courfeyrac.”

Courfeyrac's face falls just a fraction. That, too, feels calculated, but it works anyway: just as he is about to whirl around, Grantaire feels his stomach drop, his throat twist in guilt.

“Is that Grantaire?” another voice says, and of course it's fucking Marius, here to help shop for the party Courfeyrac's throwing in their apartment. “Hi! We've really missed you. Eponine keeps telling us to leave you alone, but—”

“Eponine's right,” Grantaire says, and stalks off.

 *

And because Enjolras is a contradiction, logical and thought-out to the extreme yet somehow so stupid when it gets down it; and because Grantaire isn't enough of an idiot to believe that he is worth any more than he is; and because Enjolras must have doubted that it would work, that _they_ would work without tearing themselves and their friends apart—because of all of that—they got together slowly, over the course of several weeks and several meetings at the Musain that had them arguing first in front of everyone and then arguing in private.

Somehow, arguing in private always turned into one of them pinning the other to the wall and kissing him roughly. Grantaire wasn't complaining, but his alcohol consumption had risen to dangerous levels, because despite all of this, despite the furtive kissing and the private conversations, Enjolras seemed to hate him _more_. He spent half of every ABC meeting positively _glaring_ at Grantaire, even when Grantaire wasn't doing anything except sitting in the back sketching or drinking. Once, he ripped Grantaire's sketchbook out of his hands and said, “Pay _attention_ for once, I don't know why you even come—”

“That's for planning commissions,” Grantaire said. “Which is my _job_ , so stop _crumpling_ it.”

And Enjolras, apologetic for once, handed the sketchbook back and retreated.

Later, when everyone was milling about catching up after a long week of not seeing each other, Enjolras did not engage. He was an odd picture of temperance, Artemis among the maenads, his hands pressed together behind him and both corners of his lips quirked upward in a grimace that attempted to mimic the smiles of the people interacting unselfconsciously around him.

“Apollo,” Grantaire said, passing Enjolras a cup that sloshed over onto the floor, “lighten up.”

Enjolras looked down at him, and for a moment Grantaire wondered at his phrasing: Enjolras _was_ light. It radiated from his very core. He was like the sun. Grantaire knew this, and he knew too that it burned to touch him, like Enjolras had real fire trapped beneath his skin.

For some reason, it pissed Grantaire off.

He started to back away—Bossuet and Joly were loudly arguing, and he wanted to join them, because to drink and laugh and debate with them was easy and fun in a way debating with Enjolras categorically was not—but Enjolras grabbed his arm.

“Can I have a word?” he said, and Grantaire considered telling him to fuck off but he _couldn't_ , was physically incapable of it. For all that he loved making Enjolras miserable, he'd never been able to deny him anything, not really. It was twisted, Grantaire thought, how badly he wanted this to be real.

“Only if that word is 'let's fuck,'” Grantaire said, winking at him, and for a moment he thought Enjolras might actually kill him, might pull out a gun and press it against Grantaire's temple and pull the trigger. Enjolras was okay with violence, didn't like it but understood its necessity, and perhaps he'd thought and thought about it and come to the conclusion that this was the solution to the Problem of Grantaire: a temporary abandonment of his stance on gun laws.

It made Grantaire laugh to think about, which he thought was sort of twisted, and Enjolras—bright Enjolras, burning Enjolras, statue of ivory and gold Enjolras—blushed. He turned abruptly and walked into the Musain's back room, looking back only once to ensure that Grantaire was following.

Grantaire looked around at Courfeyrac, bewildered, but Courfeyrac only winked at him.

And so Grantaire followed, walked into the back room after Enjolras.

“Hi,” Enjolras said.

“Um, hi?” Grantaire said.

“It strikes me that we've never actually _talked_ about this.”

“About what?”

Enjolras gestured between himself and Grantaire. “ _This_.”

“You mean your complete and utter loathing of me?” Grantaire asked, irritated. “Or your abundantly clear love of hate-fucking me?”

“I don't loathe you,” Enjolras said. “And it's not _hate-fucking_.”

Grantaire stared at him. “What?”

“Just normal fucking. Or, like—we don't have to call it that. It could be—”

“Please don't say—”

“—love-making,” Enjolras finished, wincing even before he'd finished saying it.

“That's disgusting,” Grantaire said. “Truly horrific.”

“Oh,” Enjolras said. A brief pause, and then: “I'd just thought—since you were—what I mean to say is that—”

“I meant calling it love-making is disgusting,” Grantaire said. “I didn't mean—I didn't even realize you liked me. You just sort of kissed me and then kept doing it.”

“Yes,” Enjolras said, nodding and frowning and looking anywhere but at Grantaire. “I thought you—what?”

“What?”

“How could you not realize I liked you when I kept kissing you?”

He looked at Grantaire now, his head cocked to the side as if to ask, _Well?_

“You never said.”

“Why would someone kiss someone they didn't like?”

Grantaire didn't think he had the capacity to explain the concept of the passion of hatred to Enjolras, not when passion to Enjolras meant standing on a table and preaching about the revolution. Once he'd shouted so loudly that he'd lost his voice for weeks, and even that hadn't stopped him. Passion for Enjolras meant something entirely different from what it meant for Grantaire. Passion was fire. Passion was need. Passion was what Grantaire felt when Enjolras's eyes blazed as he wrote a letter to the editor, when he gave his war-winning smile to a new group of disciples, when he pressed a hand against Grantaire's mouth and another against Grantaire's cock.

“Sometimes people do things that don't make sense,” Grantaire said.

“Oh,” Enjolras said, frowning. “Yeah, I know that already.”

He looked at Grantaire for a long moment.

“What?”

“Are you not going to kiss me?” Enjolras said. “I thought you reciprocated—but now you're telling me people sometimes kiss people they don't like, so you can imagine my confusion.”

“I don't think I've ever heard you admit to being confused,” Grantaire said.

“Is that a 'yes'?”

“Uh—” Grantaire thought back. “Yes?”

“Yes, you're not going to kiss me?” Enjolras said, sounding slightly panicked now. He ran a hand through his hair. “Or yes, you are going to—mmph.”

Grantaire kissed him, half to shut him up and half because he really, _really_ wanted to. He brought a cautious hand up to Enjolras's face and found that it felt nice, holding him like this, kissing him gently instead of aggressively, gliding his tongue along Enjolras's lower lip and trying not to react too roughly to the small whine Enjolras made into his mouth.

They broke apart, but Enjolras didn't let go of Grantaire's hip.

“I like you,” Enjolras said.

“I like you too,” Grantaire said, barely able to believe what was happening.

“Okay,” Enjolras said. “Okay.”

He leaned forward again, pulling Grantaire forward by the small of his back and kissing him. It was rougher this time, tantalizingly slow but with just a hint of tooth, and—

“We're about to head home, Enj—oh.”

Combeferre looked at them for a moment, and then gave a great hollering whoop that Grantaire hadn't thought him capable of.

“I knew it!” they heard Courfeyrac shout. “I fucking knew it!”

“Then why'd you make me—” Combeferre started, looking irritated, but then he turned back to Enjolras and Grantaire and grinned. “Fucking finally, eh?”

“We've been making out in this closet for months,” Grantaire informed him. “Enjolras just only just realized he needs to actually _ask me out_ in order for us to be officially dating.”

“Oh,” Combeferre said, still grinning. “Courfeyrac didn't know that.” He turned back to the brightly-lit Musain and called, “Courfeyrac, they've been at it for months!”

Courfeyrac swore loudly. “That means Jehan wins post hoc!”

“You're not using that phrase correctly,” Bahorel said. “But yeah, Jehan wins—wait, was it before or after St. Patrick's Day? Because Joly had them at the sixteenth—”

“After,” Enjolras said. “Definitely after.”

“How can you be so sure?” Grantaire asked, half-teasingly. He remembers St. Patrick's Day, vaguely: the Eiffel Tower done up in green, cheap alcohol dyed the same color, people everywhere, cold, then warmth. “Did you mark it on a calendar?”

Enjolras looked at him for a moment, and suddenly Grantaire was sure that he _had_ marked it on a calendar. “St. Patrick's Day is when you nearly broke my buzzer, passed out on the stoop of my apartment, got snowed on, and had to be rushed to the hospital to be treated for hypothermia.”

“Oh,” Grantaire said. “Right.”

Enjolras opened his mouth to say something else, but Grantaire raised a hand to stop him.

“If this is going to work,” he said, “you have to know that you're not going to be able to fix me.”

“I don't think you need fixing,” Enjolras said.

“Okay,” Combeferre said. “I should go. Enjolras, how long—”

“I'm going home with Grantaire,” Enjolras said boldly, and then looked back to Grantaire, his resolve faltering slightly. “If—if that's all right.”

“I—yeah. Yeah, of course it's all right.”

And then they were together.

 *

When Grantaire feels especially torn-up, he goes to the Louvre.

He knows it's a cliché, but the thing he loves most about Paris is its art. He supposes he has more reason to than most: he is, after all, a bona fide artist, someone who gets paid actual money to make actual paintings. Sometimes people even buy the things he painted without having them commissioned beforehand.

There's an exhibition these days called _A Brief History of the Future_ , and Grantaire has already been there twice but now goes again, standing in front of one of his favorite paintings and just existing with art.

The Louvre isn't really empty, ever, because it's Paris and there are tourists year-round, but it's at its emptiest on rainy Tuesday mornings in high autumn. Grantaire takes the fullest advantage of this and sits in front of _Le Destin des empires. Destruction_ , a terrifying painting that looks pretty much how he envisions the apocalypse, and takes out his sketchbook.

For the first time in forever, he sketches himself. He often pictures himself dangling from monkey bars, the carelessness of youth present in every lazy swing of his legs—but then he remembers, with a reluctant ache, that even in youth he was never careless. The rush of adrenaline between platform and first grasp at a bar; the anxiety at grabbing on to the next one; his father, babbling away at a new girlfriend and paying him no mind—

It's not a happy picture, he supposes, shading in his own hair, shorter and neater than it ever is now. Head comparatively large, hat ever-present even then.

He's an hour in, sneaking sips from his flask when there are no guards or curators around, when there's a light tap on his shoulder and the sudden warm weight of someone sitting beside him.

Grantaire does not frequently allow himself to hope for much—but he does now, and is somehow still unsurprised to find himself disappointed.

“It's just me,” Eponine says. “Sorry. I know this is your meet up spot or whatever.”

“Not exactly,” Grantaire says. “He would just find me here after benders.”

“I'm surprised you haven't gotten a lifetime ban from this place yet.”

“I come here when I'm hungover. I don't hurt the art. I _appreciate_ it.”

Eponine laughs.

“Nice drawing,” she says. “That you?”

“Yeah,” Grantaire says, tearing it out of his notebook. “Give it to Gavroche?”

“He'll love it.”

Grantaire waits for the question he knows is coming, and though they are both silent for a long time, she doesn't disappoint.

“What the hell happened between you two, anyway?” she asks.

Grantaire raises his shoulders hopelessly.

“I don't know. It didn't work out.”

“Don't give me that bullshit,” Eponine says, bumping his shoulder with hers. “I _know_ you, Grantaire. And I know him. He adores you. What did he do?”

“You think _he_ did something?” Grantaire says.

“What are we supposed to think? He won't talk about it. You won't talk about it, but you disappeared off the face of the earth and Enjolras goes around looking like a guilty puppy all day.”

Grantaire tries not to picture it.

“He didn't do anything,” Grantaire says. “It was just me. I'm too fucked up to have normal relationships. He would have broken up with me anyway—I'm surprised he lasted so long.”

“Oh, boo hoo, I'm such a mess, no one will ever love me,” Eponine says. “Stop making yourself miserable just because sometimes shit doesn't go right for you.”

“That's not what happened,” Grantaire says.

“I don't believe you,” Eponine says.

“Then don't.”

He stands up to leave. Eponine looks up at him.

“I'll see you this weekend,” she says. “Courfeyrac's going all out. Marius texted four times to ask what your favorite party food is.”

“I'm not going.”

“I told him it was pot brownies, but in the absence of good weed, you're partial to a good cheese and a crusty bread.”

Grantaire stares at her.

She stares back, and then, quite suddenly, smiles.

 *

The break-up happened quickly.

One day, Grantaire got horrible news from the woman hosting a gallery show. She'd dropped him. “Too weird,” she said, while only weeks before she'd told him, “Be more original. Be you.”

His first instinct to text Enjolras, whose response came hours later because he was at work: _that's horrible—I have some stuff I want to talk to you about. dinner will be enlightening for both of us I hope_.

That did little to assuage Grantaire's misery. If anything, he dwelled on that more: enlightening? How? For Enjolras, enlightenment was alternately the end goal of the human race and a horribly racist ideal depending on who was talking about it and why.

And so he drank. He drank himself out of stock, basically, beer and brandy and even absinthe, and by the time it was time to meet Enjolras Grantaire was so drunk that he if he closed his eyes for too long, the room spun.

They went out to dinner at the best Italian restaurant in Paris, a place Enjolras had made reservations for weeks in advance like he'd been planning something, and Enjolras said, “Your apartment's kind of a dump.”

“Don't be mean,” Grantaire said in a playful tone that he hoped at least somewhat resembled his usual voice. “I named my radiator after you.”

“Not sure if I should be offended by that or not.”

“It's loud and hot,” Grantaire said, nudging Enjolras's foot with his own under the table. “Take that however you want.”

“Right,” Enjolras said, looking down at his half-eaten ravioli and then back up at Grantaire.

Was he _nervous_? It was getting close to their anniversary, or at least the anniversary of the time Enjolras actually asked him out and didn't just kiss him senseless in a closet, and Grantaire wondered if Enjolras was about to give him a particularly lavish gift. A new radiator, perhaps, or a gift certificate for a central heating system. A lamp, maybe? That would be enlightening.

“Spit it out, Apollo,” Grantaire said, as gently as he could muster. He nudged Enjolras's foot again. Normalcy. He was going for normalcy. “What is it?”

“I was just thinking,” Enjolras said. “I mean—we're both adults. We know where this is going.”

The bread in Grantaire's stomach felt suddenly very heavy, sloshing around in a mess of alcohols and acids. Grantaire's grip around his wineglass was shaky, and he found himself clutching it just to have something to do with his hands. None of this was normal. Enjolras and Grantaire together wasn't normal. It didn't make sense. People probably looked at them funny when they were out together.

“Right,” he said quickly. “Right, I get it. That's fine. I, uh—let me just pay the check. Unless you want—I don't know—something—”

“Wait,” Enjolras said. “What?”

“What?”

“Are you breaking up with me?” Enjolras demanded.

“Aren't _you_ breaking up with _me_?”

“Why would you think that?”

“It would make sense,” Grantaire said. “I mean—it's _you_. And _me_.”

“I don't have a fucking clue what that's supposed to mean,” Enjolras said. “I _love_ you.”

“I don't believe you,” Grantaire said, right on top of him, and it was an accident, saying that, but it was out there now and there was no changing it.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras said gently, reaching for Grantaire's hand where it is still wrapped around his wineglass. “I need you to try.”

Grantaire was very drunk, or he wouldn't have done what he did next:

“I don't need you to save me,” he snapped, twisting away from Enjolras's touch so violently that the wineglass fell and shattered, the remaining dregs of wine staining the tablecloth dark red.

Enjolras stared at it.

“Grantaire,” he said.

Enjolras had the capacity for great rage. In the right moment, he could be violent or reproachful or contemptuous. He could tear you apart with a sentence if he wanted to, or he could incinerate you with a speech. Grantaire had never actually seen him hit anyone, but Enjolras had the kind of stance that made you think he could pack a very nasty punch.

But now, Enjolras was not full of rage. If he was angry at all, he wasn't showing it. He was sitting very still, his hand still reaching across the table, not far from the broken glass.

His voice, if anything, was worried. It had decent reason to be, Grantaire supposed: he'd been drinking since that morning. He was drunk and upset. That was typical.

Enjolras's pity, however, was not.

“Fuck you,” Grantaire said.

He left the restaurant.

 *

In the end, the decision to go to the party comes out of inevitability.

Jehan, Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta all text him variations on _please come we all miss you_. He even gets a sad haiku from Jehan, which is when he realizes that he's really pushed it by keeping out of touch for so long.

When Grantaire thinks about it, Bossuet and Joly were _his_ friends first. So was Eponine. It isn't fair that Enjolras gets to make out with all of them in the break up. The ABC is not so much a singular unit that it can't take some fractionalization—or at least, that it can't handle Grantaire occasionally seeing his friends.

And even regardless of all that, Grantaire misses them. He's barely seen anyone in weeks other than a few clients and gallery owners. He thrives in groups, Grantaire does, and this self-imposed solitude is not a group. Perhaps that's why his art has been so fucking horrible lately.

He sighs, and the day before Halloween, starts to gather the pieces to a costume.

*

The thing about Enjolras was, when they weren't arguing and even sometimes when they were, it was so _nice_.

Enjolras possessed—possesses—an incredibly sexy combination of charm and arrogance, but when he was alone with Grantaire, sometimes the arrogance gave way to something softer: shyness, maybe, or even nervousness. There was the always-on revolutionary Enjolras, and then there was Enjolras the lover, whose hard lines were still there but were blurred a little, like humanity peeking through the marble of a statue. Ivory and gold melted away to reveal, against all odds, flesh.

They engaged in debates while kissing. They fought one another in bed, their bodies conducting arguments that neither of them ever lost.

Enjolras, so frequently sharp and harsh, became pliable and giving beneath Grantaire. He moaned the same way he called for change: loudly, and so insistent that it drove Grantaire crazy even months later.

*

Courfeyrac and Marius's apartment is situated above the Musain like Enjolras's, but it's on a lower floor, so there's always the warmth from the Musain's fireplace and the noise from the bar creating ambiance.

On Halloween night, this makes for an interesting atmosphere: the party is dimly-lit like all Courfeyrac's parties, but it's early enough still that the place isn't filled with randoms that Courfeyrac found in the wild or wherever it is he finds his randoms.

As a result, the party feels much more intimate, filled as it is with people Grantaire knows well but who have, for the most part, not seen him in weeks.

Joly and Bossuet and Musichetta swing by him first, offering up drinks and hugs and dragging him into group dances. Then Combeferre says hello, compliments Grantaire's costume, and returns to wooing—or attempting to woo—Eponine. Meanwhile, Eponine kisses Grantaire's cheek in an uncharacteristic fit of affection—stoned, Grantaire later realizes—and Bahorel and Feuilly offer Grantaire hits from their spliffs. Marius and Cosette only have eyes for each other, but Cosette waves at Grantaire when she spots him. Even Jehan is too preoccupied to really pay attention to Grantaire, though the person he is preoccupied with—Courfeyrac—sidles right up to Grantaire and throws an arm around his shoulders.

“Greetings!” Courfeyrac bellows into Grantaire's ear. “Pleasure to have you here!”

“I've been here about an hour,” Grantaire says, noticing that Courfeyrac is walking them into the part of the apartment he's been avoiding. “What are you doing?”

“Naught,” Courfeyrac says. “ _Naught_!”

“What?”

Courfeyrac swings Grantaire around.

“It is time,” he says, “to _party_ , my friend. For the party has missed you much.”

He lets go of Grantaire, then produces another drink, which he shoves into Grantaire's hand.

“Be merry and have fun,” Courfeyrac says, kissing Grantaire's cheek sloppily and wandering off.

“Well,” the voice Grantaire was avoiding says. “That was odd.”

Grantaire's heart beats a staccato under his ribs. Carefully, he bites his lip and forces himself to breathe normally. This is Courfeyrac's party and he's supposed to be seeing people he hasn't seen in weeks, not picking a fight with Enjolras.

He turns around.

“Hi,” Grantaire says, thanking whatever gods might be lurking above him that he's already had multiple drinks.

“I didn't think you'd come.”

Enjolras is fiddling with the end of his tie. He's wearing a tuxedo and his blond hair is slicked back. He looks like a particularly irritating butler in high quality gay porn.

“Or—that's not it exactly,” Enjolras continues. Even like this, it looks like the sun is hiding under his skin. “I thought you'd come later. I was going—I was going to leave.”

“Don't want to run into your ex? Too awkward?”

“I just thought you wouldn't want to see me.”

Grantaire doesn't say anything to this: it's true, he supposes, but at the same time seeing Enjolras here is. Well. Overwhelming, to say the least. He's as lovely as always, of course, but a little tired, like he hasn't been sleeping enough or like he's been skimping on the caffeine. There's something uncharacteristically human about the circles under his eyes.

“What's the costume supposed to be?” Grantaire asks, lighting a cigarette.

“Uh—isn't it obvious?”

Enjolras strikes a pose, points finger guns directly at Grantaire. Grantaire wishes he didn't find that so attractive. Maybe it's a little fucked up that he does.

“Double-oh-seven,” Enjolras says. “James Bond.”

“You look like a Hollywood cater waiter.”

Enjolras smiles.

“Can I have a cigarette?” he asks.

“They're pretty expensive,” Grantaire says. “Not to mention they kill people, so.”

“And they make the air stuffy,” Enjolras says. “Pretty rude, smoking inside.”

“Other people are doing it.”

“Still,” Enjolras says. “Balcony might be a better choice.”

“Sounds like you're trying to get me alone, Apollo,” Grantaire says, grinning and then wishing he hadn't.

It's just that he slips back into it too easily, flirting with Enjolras. It's like second nature to him. And Enjolras must know it, because he blinks several times in quick succession and then coughs delicately.

“Well,” he says. “Yes.”

That's surprising enough that Grantaire follows Enjolras out onto the balcony, which has been decorated—Grantaire suspects by Cosette—with flowerpots. Several ashtrays are set out.

Grantaire hands Enjolras a cigarette and then—because he's a masochist, apparently—lights it for him. Enjolras doesn't break eye contact, and Grantaire is reminded that this is one of the things Enjolras finds hot. For them, smoking and arguing is basically foreplay. Grantaire tries not to think about it.

“Thanks,” Enjolras says.

When he exhales, his face is momentarily clouded with grey smoke. He has the lung capacity of a flautist, Grantaire thinks. It probably comes from all the shouting.

“How have you been?” Grantaire says.

“Okay,” Enjolras says.

They stand in silence for a while, Enjolras smoking so slowly that Grantaire finishes his cigarette and is most of the way through another before Enjolras gets to the end of his.

“I just,” he says, pressing it into an ash tray. “I wish we could talk about it. I don't think we—I don't think _I_ can go back to normal until we talk about it.”

“What do you mean?” Grantaire asks.

Enjolras sighs.

“You haven't been around. You don't know. I'm miserable. I'm falling apart. Not professionally, of course—”

“—Of course.”

“—but falling apart nonetheless.”

Enjolras takes another cigarette—fingers in Grantaire's back pocket for the pack, familiar enough to warm but just quick enough to smart—but he fiddles with it before putting it in his mouth. He lights it himself this time.

“It's just,” he says. “It's like an open wound. Missing you, I mean. I don't know what I did wrong.”

“You didn't do anything wrong,” says Grantaire, who has gone over the moment—the whole day—a thousand times in an effort to figure out what made him snap. “I'm sorry. I was upset and drunk and I lashed out. It's hard for me sometimes, to—to believe that someone like you might—”

He stops, looking away from Enjolras at the Paris cityscape beyond the Musain.

“I know that,” Enjolras says. “But will you at least try to believe me when I say that I love you? That I think it's absurd when you say you don't deserve me when I'm still trying to figure out what _I_ ever did to deserve _you_? That I think you're maddening and brilliant and _wonderful_ , that I think about you all the time, that I'm so, so _angry_ with you for not communicating with me—for not _explaining_ to me what I was doing wrong so I could fix it—”

Enjolras's voice, which has gradually gotten higher and higher in pitch, now cuts off completely. He stays still and silent until Grantaire turns at last to look at him.

Enjolras has been looking at him the whole time, his blue eyes wide and steady on Grantaire's. He looks like a fanart version of Draco Malfoy. A Twilight vampire. A _Gossip Girl_ character. Something shiny and altogether too beautiful to be real.

“You look like Macaulay Culkin at the Oscars,” Grantaire says.

“I was going to ask you to move in with me,” Enjolras says. His voice is soft now, steady. “I wasn't ever going to break up with you. I hate sleeping in my bed without you. I always wake up missing you.”

“Me too,” Grantaire says. This information is new, difficult to process. The way Enjolras says it, like a confession instead of like a fact, is telling. Grantaire finds it difficult to imagine Enjolras saying any of this before. He inhales chilly clean air, tries not to think about what he's done to Enjolras to make him like this—all emotional—and then takes another drag.

“Your costume is seriously ridiculous,” Grantaire says. “It doesn't work at all.”

“I thought about dyeing my hair, but Courfeyrac said it would be a bad idea.”

Grantaire considers this and laughs, ashing his cigarette.

“I really am sorry,” he says. “Sometimes I wish I could take myself apart and rip out all the bad parts and put myself back together again. Or just—just stay in pieces. At least then I couldn't—”

But he stops, because Enjolras's stare has grown more alarmed now.

“You don't need to rip out any parts of yourself,” Enjolras says. “You go to therapy. You take your meds. You work on what you need to work on. You're perfect.”

“I love you,” Grantaire says, breaking eye contact. “I love you and I'm sorry and I wish I could fix _this_.”

“Me too,” Enjolras says, moving closer to Grantaire until they bump shoulders.

It's the first time they've touched in three months and nine days. It sends a shiver down Grantaire's spine. It's odd to think that it's been months, but his feelings for Enjolras haven't dulled at all. He looks down and thinks that if someone pushed him off the edge right now, he wouldn't even mind that much.

“Let's do it,” Enjolras says.

“What?” Grantaire says, startled.

“Let's fix it.”

“I don't know how.”

“You love me,” Enjolras says. “I love you. That has to be enough.”

“Is it?”

“Yes,” Enjolras says firmly, sure in this as he is of all things.

“You've always been an optimist,” Grantaire says.

“Sometimes the optimists are right.”

“Usually they aren't.”

“Sometimes they _are_.”

Grantaire looks at him. Enjolras is earnest, charged up, like he's fighting for something real instead of just Grantaire, and he's backlit in the city lights and he looks magnificent.

“Okay,” Grantaire says.

“Okay?”

“Okay. Let's try it.”

Enjolras looks at Grantaire like he can't quite believe what he's hearing.

“I mean it, Apollo,” Grantaire says softly. “Let's try it.”

“I,” Enjolras says. “Okay. If you—if you want to.”

“What I want to do is kiss you,” Grantaire says. “Would that be okay?”

“Yes,” Enjolras says, almost before Grantaire has even finished talking. “Yes, please—I—”

Grantaire kisses him. It's quick and light, leaving Enjolras with his eyes closed still half-leaning on the railing. He tastes like Grantaire's cigarettes and Courfeyrac's booze and something deeper, muskier. Cloves, maybe. His lips part when Grantaire moves away, and then his eyes open.

“That's it?” he says. “Bullshit.”

Grantaire laughs, but Enjolras doesn't. He wraps his hand in the front of Grantaire's shirt and pulls him closer until they're millimeters apart. Grantaire can count every eyelash.

“Okay?” he says softly, right up against Grantaire's mouth.

“Okay,” Grantaire breathes back.

Enjolras takes this as a cue to kiss him fast and hard, their bodies pressed flush against one another. It's rough and it lacks finesse, which is not very much like Enjolras at all. This is a new kind of aggression from Enjolras, want in its undiluted form, something closer to need.

“You are—fucking—incredible,” Enjolras mumbles into Grantaire's mouth. “I love you. Never leave me again.” A moment's pause. “Please.”

Something sounds wrong in his voice, almost unhinged, and the way he is still clinging to Grantaire—one hand in Grantaire's shirt, the other arm wrapped so tightly around his waist that it almost hurts—tugs at Grantaire's heart.

“I won't,” Grantaire says, and Enjolras releases him, or at least loosens his grip.

And then he lets go entirely and leans forward, resting his head on Grantaire's shoulder, mouth buried in the crook of Grantaire's neck.

“I missed you,” Enjolras says.

“I missed you too.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“It's going to be enough,” Enjolras says, and it sounds like a promise.

**Author's Note:**

> Do they do costume parties for Halloween in Paris? Well. This is fiction, so I guess it doesn't much matter.
> 
> Anyway: [torakowalski](http://archiveofourown.org/users/torakowalski/pseuds/torakowalski), I really hope you liked it! 
> 
> Everyone else: please leave a comment! They bring tears (of joy) to my eye, even when they're mean. But, uh. Please don't be mean to me.
> 
> Title is from Keaton Henson, “Polite Plea”
> 
> The painting Grantaire likes at the Louvre really is a part of that show there. It's the fourth part of a five-part series by Thomas Cole, and it's _gorgeous_ :
> 
>  


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